Weld County District Attorney and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck addresses constituents at the “Victory House” Republican Party Headquarters in Durango, Colo., during a campaign stopover Monday, Oct. 25, 2010. Barton Glasser / Special to The Denver Post

Republican Ken Buck’s comments that he disagreed “strongly with the concept of the separation of church and state” reverberated through the political blogosphere Tuesday, forcing Buck’s campaign into yet another defensive posture less than a week before the election.

There, GOP hopeful Christine O’Donnell last week questioned whether the separation of church and state was in the Constitution.

“A week after extremist Christine O’Donnell called into question the separation of church and state, reports show Buck took it a step further and said he completely disagrees with any separation of church and state,” said the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in a news release.

Buck’s campaign says what he meant was “political correctness that has run amok,” said Owen Loftus, Buck spokesman.

Loftus called the video — posted to the liberal Think Progress blog Tuesday morning — another attempt at distracting voters about a terrible Democratic record on creating jobs and improving the economy.

Bennet spokesman Trevor Kincaid didn’t hesitate to leap on the video, sending out a list of other examples where Buck uttered similar sentiments in interviews or on the campaign trail. Kincaid also pointed out that Buck told the Christian Family Alliance in a survey that he supported public posting of the Ten Commandments.

For his part, Buck spent most of Tuesday discussing jobs and health care at a Denver manufacturing company, but his message was overshadowed by a news cycle chewing on his words made new by an opposition machine.

Denver political consultant Eric Sondermann said Buck is now toiling on problems that resonate with voters, “but they’re not daily issues.”

“Bennet has the new information,” Sondermann said. “Bennet does not want to run this thing on economic issues, jobs or health care.”

State GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, who has run several U.S. Senate campaigns, has seen the strategy before, when “they feel the campaign is slipping away, they are behind this kind of behavior.”

Mike Feeley agreed. Feeley, now a lawyer at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, has run for office as a Democrat and helped orchestrate multiple statehouse and congressional races.

“This is Hail Mary time,” he said. “They are definitely trying to move the needle with a necessary constituency. It’s like, ‘OK, how do we get that point? OK, we need to move women. OK, we need to move students. OK, we need to move Hispanics.’ “

In the Colorado Christian University video, Buck was responding to a question from a young woman who asked how he would preserve American culture in an increasingly blended society.

Buck said that immigration was important because “we are allowing immigration to control us.” He then said he disagreed strongly with the concept of separation of church and state.

“While we have a Constitution that is very strong in the sense that we are not going to have a religion sanctioned by the government, it does not mean we need to have a separation between government and religion,” he said, to applause. “That concerns me a great deal.”

In finishing his response, Buck offered an anecdote about President Barack Obama that has been discredited by fact-checking websites:

“And, and one thing that President Obama has done that I would certainly speak about is calling the Christmas tree, which has historically been called a Christmas tree in Washington, D.C., a holiday tree. It’s just flat wrong in my mind.”

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